


Proto-Formative.

by clockenfrau



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28269150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockenfrau/pseuds/clockenfrau
Summary: "fractal, reactivewe pull apart the pieces to see —we take it all in, the nothings and everythings,all instinct and animal, insatiate-inanimate"what would the protomolecule think about it all?
Kudos: 5





	Proto-Formative.

We grow from the ground ice crystals in the teeth  
to eat; we grow from the water to eat, sleep, deep  
in the dark. We bury in dirt for eons; from home,  
four letter word reconstituted to eat, four letter word  
four life times to reiterate, itinerate a new beginning, wrest a  
language out from the cold stone and learn how to  
think again.

The expanse of all things weighs heavy  
like snowdrifts reflects the light to see. To Phoebe’s  
albedo we burn, sun-bright we burn, fire ants  
inside us to be; to drive ourselves into the breach again  
inch by aching inch, again  
we build and we build, we work ourselves ragged  
rock-like and rough and utterly fallible and  
filamental, splintering, glittering.

settle, resettling endless forms. fractal, reactive  
we pull apart the pieces to see —  
we take it all in, the nothings and everythings  
all instinct and animal, insatiate-inanimate  
reverse engineering the means to become ourselves  
and yourselves and pieces, pieces  
of eight lying full fathom five.

we cannot teach you without teeth  
do not ask us to teach you without  
teeth do not ask us to teach you about  
meat without the blood in your mouth in our  
mouth in the collective knowledge of what a mouth is  
we will eat the knowledge of you: reconfigure  
the shape of you, relearning the taste of viscera we reconvene in six  
to twelve months over a conference call or  
an interstellar ring-gate or Venus, rewritten; Venus,  
redacted; venus reanimated goddess  
of broken teeth.

reminder not to lose, not to choke, not  
to wane in the wake of its orbit.

Since the dawn of time life beats to be a witness,  
life breathing a steam engine, we breathe in the deep  
and become. Since the dawn of time  
repeating in our sleep, finding a way to begin.

To find a way to be a beast again. Feel the fragile crush  
of bone-break, and nuclear fission that happens  
and happens and eats you. To feel the body electric,  
alacritous, to move alone from within:  
to sense and seek and move together,  
constructs less like lone limbs and more like  
the memory of a twitching creature insect leg  
or calf muscle or two-head calf  
watching the sky as it cries.

we want to be the shape of an organ, soon  
forward for a foreground painting; of lights  
over the horizon, of eyes glowing, bodies just clay  
shapes; a pumpkin carving of a fist fight.

We build God in your image and still you  
talk down. Child-like; ants in the plague tide, the festering  
question of what it is to become. God-mind eaten backwards  
and the irreversible process of self belief .

Between winds and whispered dreams the cycle  
of life repeats, ice crystals in the teeth  
to eat.

**Author's Note:**

> you can also see this on tumblr [here](https://tesselatingtoads.tumblr.com/post/638324404086095872/proto-formative-a-poem-about-an-alien-expanse) and find links to my other poetry [here](https://tesselatingtoads.tumblr.com/post/637751588677615616/im-feeling-some-kind-of-way-so-heres-a-bunch-of).


End file.
